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|| Jurassic World: Black Pulse ||
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Chapter 01: "Jurassic World"
Location: Somewhere In Africa, And Then In Isla Nublar;
Year: 2013;
Leandro's Age: 22;
POV: First Person.
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The camp generator coughed again, sputtering like a smoker on his deathbed,— fitting, since everything around here felt like it was ready to fall apart, or blow up, or both.
The humid jungle air clung to my skin like wet wool, thick and cloying, the stench of diesel and sweat woven into every breath I took.
Flies buzzed around my neck, fearless and persistent, not giving a damn that the men they harassed were armed and mean.
I sat on a dented crate outside our prefab barracks, oil-streaked rag in one hand, rifle bolt in the other, halfway through a maintenance routine I could do blindfolded.
Eight years in the field does that,— clean, check, oil, reassemble. Reliable as breath, mindless as prayer. It gave my hands something to do while the rest of me avoided thinking too hard. About war, about the people I'd lost, and about the person I'd become.
Then the sat-phone rang,— twice,— before someone picked it up inside.
"Leandro!" Mateus's voice echoed from the tent flap behind me. "It's for you,— some slick-sounding doctor." That got a few snorts from the others.
Might've been funny if it wasn't so damned familiar. In this line of work, "doctors" usually meant arms dealers with fancy titles, corporate recruiters with blood on their paperwork, or poacher middlemen looking for muscle.
My name had been passed around more than I liked lately.
I didn't rush to pick the phone from his hand, just shifted the bolt onto my thigh, tucked the sat-phone between my shoulder and cheek like a cigarette, and kept working the rag through the grooves.
The voice that came through was precise, clean,— sterile, almost. Each syllable sounded like it had been autopsied before it reached my ear.
"Mr. Silva, this is Dr. Henry Wu. I believe we've spoken once,— briefly,— during the previous year. I'd like to extend a formal offer to you." My hand paused mid-motion, slowly, deliberately, and I placed the bolt on the crate beside me.
"Go on." I said, tone flat but alert.
"There's a position on Isla Nublar clear, for someone like you." he continued, with the confidence of a man who expected no interruptions. "I'm sure you've heard of Jurassic World,— a secure island, corporate-funded, state-of-the-art operations. You'd be working alongside trained professionals, providing support for internal security, research integrity, and perhaps something more... No frontline engagements, good pay, and "full" clearance."
I could hear the subtle click of his keyboard beneath the words. A man in a lab, surrounded by data and cold air, efficient, focused.
He didn't waste time. "Why me?" I asked, not because I doubted what I could do, but because I'd learned that when someone said it wasn't combat, it usually was.
Wu didn't hesitate. "I need someone with your expertise. So I recommended you to the owner of Jurassic World to assist with a sensitive project I've been developing... off the record. I also need someone who won't ask that kind of question again."
His tone didn't change. It didn't have to. The message was as clear as a threat and twice as binding.
"Right." I replied slowly. "I understand that."
He gave me a contact code and signed off with the kind of detachment that stuck to your ribs. I stared at the black screen for a second longer, listening to the jungle breathe behind me.
Back inside, the squad was stripping gear and passing around the warm beer we'd traded for spare rounds last week. Costa looked up, half-lidded eyes glinting under the yellow tent light. "Bad news, 'ghost'?"
"Job offer." I said, walking in, "On a dinosaur-infested island."
"Corporate?" Mateus asked, wiping sweat from his brow, and I nodded. "Something like that."
"Take it." Costa muttered, like he was telling me to take a piss. His tone carried that casual finality people develop when they've seen too much to care anymore.
Near the ammo locker, Javari, our commander, kicked up his boots, grinning through a half-rolled cigarette. "Fucking finally. I was starting to think we'd have to shoot you to get you to leave. God-sent, this offer." My eyes narrowed as I stared at him.
"Is that so? Why don't you go eat shit, fucker?" A tension settled over the tent like a storm cloud,— half real, half ritual. Yet, it cracked a second later with a laugh that melted the pressure like rain. Javari leaned forward, his grin softening. "Seriously, you should go. Live like a normal person for once,— somewhere where the sun doesn't smell like gunpowder, and with coworkers who aren't paid to bleed out in the jungle."
I leaned against the wooden frame of the barrack's entrance, arms folded, boots heavy with dried mud. "It's not that simple a choice..." I muttered, even if I didn't know why I said it.
"You don't owe us shit." Silvar, another colleague of our group, called from across the tent. "And if the Dr. Wu's calling you personally? Must be serious. You did pull his ass out of that mess last year, remember? Maybe this is him returning the favor. Or maybe... this is your off-ramp." His words settled in like a loaded silence.
I didn't reply, simply turned, heavy-footed, toward my personal barrack at the edge of the compound. The jungle chirped and growled all around, unaware of my moral conflict.
That night, I sat on a folding chair just outside the main barracks, the sky overhead bruised with stars. A cigarette glowed between Mateus's fingers a few feet away, its ember pulsing red every time he took a drag.
The sat-phone sat in my lap like a weight.
A job on a dinosaur island,— with no battlefields, no kill lists,— just tourists, screaming kids and overpriced churros.
I wasn't sure if I believed it. But part of me,— some old, half-dead thing,— wanted to.
Wanted to remember what it felt like to be normal... before I forgot how to even pretend.
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Two weeks later…
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Flying into Isla Nublar didn't feel like arriving at a new job. Then again, I wasn't exactly familiar with that feeling also.
What it did feel like was being delivered,— by a corporate helicopter, no less, with the word InGen stamped on its sleek fuselage,— to a billionaire's pet project.
Ocean gave way to jungle coastline, and then to flat stretches of tarmac. Concrete, security fencing, and just beyond that, a world of glass and steel that didn't quite belong here. It didn't belong anywhere, really,— not in the world I came from.
A different kind of jungle. It was neater, controlled, sanitized. And for once, one with less death,— much less.
The chopper hissed as it touched down, and I spotted a man in a trim suit standing on the landing pad, clipboard in hand. He gave me a curt nod as I stepped out, like I was late for something no one had explained to me.
No handshake, no salute.
Just a silent gesture toward a sleek black SUV already idling nearby. The ride across the island was long and silent, cutting through manicured paths and heavy green underbrush. Motion sensors blinked from tall steel walls that loomed over both sides of the road. Even in a cage, the jungle pressed in,— beautiful, yes, but it carried a weight only I seemed to feel. It didn't want me here, or perhaps it was I, that was tired of being amongst the various jungles I spent my last years in.
Eventually, we pulled up in front of a building that looked more like a five-star resort than a research compound.
Chrome fixtures caught the sun, wide glass steps stretched out before me, and overhead, the logos gleamed: Masrani Global Corporation / Jurassic World.
The suited man motioned me inside without a word, and cold, clinical air conditioning hit me like a slap.
Two guards stood just past the entrance,— stoic, methodical. They scanned me quickly, impassively. I'd met worse men, and killed worse ones too.
Then she appeared. Young, but older than me by quite a few years. With a tablet in hand, tight ponytail, and a businesslike posture. "Mr. Silva." she said, offering a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
"My name is Claire Dearing, I'm the Senior Operations Manager of the park. Welcome to Jurassic World! Dr. Wu is expecting you upstairs." I gave her a small nod and stepped into the elevator with her.
Corporate music trickled in from unseen speakers,— soft, inoffensive, and irritatingly cheerful. Exactly the kind of music designed to make you forget things.
I hated it immediately.
When the doors slid open, they revealed a hallway of spotless white walls and elegant minimalism. A lab stretched to the right behind a glass wall,— gloved hands, lab coats, biohazard signs.
Precision in motion, somewhat of a word that I didn't understand, at least not in this polished and clean ambient of work...
And then, I saw him.
Dr. Henry Wu stood at the far end, arms crossed as he studied a slow-moving DNA render on a large touchscreen wall.
"Leandro Silva." he said without turning. "I'm glad that you decided to come." When he finally turned around, his eyes roamed over me like he was scanning for cracks.
That same unreadable expression I remembered from the recovery tent, when I pulled his ass out of a jungle mess he hadn't been designed to survive. Only now, something had shifted.
Less fear, more curiosity.
"I've arranged a full suite for you. Clearance level two, for now. If you prove yourself dependable, that can change." I gave a half-shrug. "Do I need to sign anything first?"
He smirked faintly, and somehow that subtle shift unsettled me more than a threat would've. "You already did,— when you boarded that helicopter."
Before I could respond, a second door opened behind me, and I turned.
Simon Masrani entered like the room had been waiting for him. Navy blazer, open-collar shirt, the air of a man who didn't wear authority so much as emanate it.
Claire Dearing followed at his side, tablet still glued to her hands, while I didn't even registered her slipping away before.
Her expression was still sharp, and everything about her screamed overworked and over-prepared.
"Ah! So this is our new hire." Masrani beamed. "Dr. Wu said you were sharp, though I guess he forgot to mention you look like a mercenary."
"He is... a mercenary." Claire murmured, barely under her breath, and Masrani chuckled and offered me a hand. "Welcome to the world's most misunderstood miracle, Mr. Silva."
His grip surprised me,— firm, warm, and real. Not the handshake of a CEO removed from his empire, but of someone who liked to feel the pulse of his kingdom.
Claire didn't offer her hand, no surprise there, and we had indeed met earlier.
What she offered, was just a brief, polite nod, then straight into protocols and figures, with no time for pleasantries. She wasn't here to charm me after all, she was here to make sure I didn't 'break' anything.
Masrani, meanwhile, studied me like I was a new book he couldn't wait to read. Unafraid, and unfiltered. The kind of way people look at a story, not a threat.
It was... disarming... and unsettling.
Wu remained silent, his gaze flicking between the three of us, quietly calculating. I suspected he preferred to speak to people alone,— no distractions. That talk would come later, when discussing the real reason for the need of my presence in this island.
Claire tapped a few times on her tablet, clearly focused. She didn't look at me, which made her all the more interesting in my eyes.
When she did, those green eyes weren't warm or cold,— just aware. She clocked things, me included. "Your initial contract places you under Asset Containment and Emergency Protocols Specialist, Tier 2." she said crisply. "You'll report to Security Ops, but your clearance falls under Dr. Wu. That means limited access,— Zones 1 through 3 only. No genomic labs unless directly authorized."
"Sounds like a lot of doors I'm not supposed to open." I said, leaning back slightly just enough to suggest I wasn't intimidated.
Yet Claire didn't flinch. "This isn't a joke, Mr. Silva. We have over nine hundred staff, two hundred active dinosaurs in the park perimeter,— fifty to sixty different species,— and upwards of twenty-five thousand guests a day. One mistake, one unauthorized action, and people die. So yes, there are a lot of doors." Her tone was measured, not angry, the kind of calm that says 'don't mistake this for leniency'.
I couldn't help but smile.
That fire, hidden under her layers of professionalism,— it was interesting. It told me a lot about who she really was. And I liked that, a lot.
"And the pay?" I asked, and she swiped, turnning the screen of her tablet toward me in a swift motion. "One hundred and thirty-five thousand per annum. That's base salary,— doesn't include hazard bonuses or incentives."
I glanced toward Wu, then Masrani. Both caught the silent joke,— Wu knew that was low for someone with my background, and Masrani just smirked subtly, clearly in on it.
Claire either didn't notice or didn't care.
"You'll be housed in our most prestigious employee residence." she continued, "With full board and a view of Main Street, courtesy of Dr. Wu. Bonuses are monthly, and non-disclosure agreements are legally binding in seven countries, including, and especially in Brazil, Germany, and Japan." she said with a pointed look.
I raised a brow. "Impressive. I'm flattered you did your homework."
"We all do our homework here, Mr. Silva." she replied, tone clipped with something akin to exhaustion. That worn-down edge caught Masrani's attention for a beat, but her gaze simply lingered on me just a little longer than it should have.
I noticed, and so I looked her over once,— respectfully, not too long. A quick scan, really. The blouse tucked into her pencil skirt, the way she sat like she couldn't afford to show fatigue, the small freckle near her temple.
I noticed more and more, how attractive of a woman she was...
"Any rules about eye contact too?" I asked dryly. "Only if it gets in the way of the job," she replied, perfectly neutral.
Oh, I see how that is...
I held her gaze just a heartbeat too long, then nodded. "Got it, perfectly clear." She pressed forward. "You'll be issued a transponder badge as well. Your movements will be monitored, and any perimeter deviation will trigger a response from Security. That includes off-hours, you should remember that you're not a tourist."
"Never claimed to be, Ms. Dearing." I said, letting just a bit of edge bleed into my voice.
Not a threat,— just raw heat, the kind that makes people pay attention.
Wu shifted subtly behind the table, while Masrani chuckled softly. I was beginning to like the man, and we hadn't even hit the twenty-minute mark.
Claire handed me a minimalist cream folder with the company seal embossed on it, with a clean design, and expensive print.
"Your schedule for the next week." she said. "Orientation with Security Ops; a meeting with Viv Jones from HR; and then a containment drill with one of our behaviorists—Owen Grady. You'll be assigned to his team temporarily on the choosen day."
I took the folder slowly, and our fingers brushed,— briefly.
Her grip was firm, with cold skin, and professional grip.
Still,— there was something charged in that contact, like the static you feel before a storm. Something that shouldn't have lingered… but did.
And as her hand guided mine with clinical precision, something inside me shifted. For the first time since my family was killed, I was letting myself be led by something other than logic,— by something buried beneath grief and survival. It was faint, fleeting, but it was there.
Emotion... hormones... whatever it was.
Claire pulled her hand back like nothing had happened. "If you have questions, direct them to your assigned trainer, who will be with you for the first days of your stay, working here at Jurassic World." Her voice snapped back into cold efficiency. "If you get lost, don't. We don't have time to babysit new hires."
Masrani chuckled again, the sound off to the side like a breeze catching on glass, and that finally made Claire glance his way. Dr. Wu didn't even look up, his fingers still dancing over the compact keyboard of his portable console like nothing outside its screen mattered.
"Got it." I said, slipping the folder under my arm. "No doors, no jokes, and definitely no babysitting."
At that, Claire paused,—j ust enough. The corner of her mouth lifted in the faintest suggestion of amusement, her brow ticking up a millimeter like a reluctant concession.
"You'll do fine here… assuming you remember which side of the glass you're on."
"I've lived on both." That stopped her,— not long, just a flicker of breath. But something unreadable crossed her face.
It reminded me of those moments in camp, late at night, when we used to watch old movies,— where the girl's mask slips for a heartbeat, and you see not calculation, but curiosity.
Young, unsure, human curiosity.
Then the mask slid back into place, and she turned back to her tablet as though the moment hadn't happened at all.
Masrani, still smiling as if he'd been watching the whole scene like a play, turned to Wu. "I think he'll fit in nicely on my island."
And for the first time in a long time, I smiled,— broad and real.
This was fun.
Being normal again.
Or at least pretending to be.
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|| Jurassic World: Black Pulse ||
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